


Hunting the Dragon

by Prochytes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Merlin (TV), Torchwood
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-27
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:58:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two sides to every coin, and The Great Dragon’s currency is good far beyond the borders of Camelot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunting the Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Torchwood 2x03 “To the Last Man” and Doctor Who 1x04 “Aliens of London”. Headings from “The Hunting of the Dragon” by G. K. Chesterton. Dub-con in the second section. Originally posted on LJ in 2009.

1\. Never was world so wild and fair as what went by on the wind.

  
“I met him once, you know. Merlin.”

“Merlin?” Tommy looked sceptical, a feat of which few are capable from a supine position. “You’re ragging me, Toshiko. You met Merlin?”

“I met _a_ Merlin. We’re pretty sure there’ve been several.”

“Multiple Merlins?”

“Uh-huh. That happens more often than you would think. Don’t get me started on the Loch Ness Monsters. Or the Avalons. Unreachable islands girt with summer seas are two-a-penny. Ianto has a list.”

“But you actually met the… a… Merlin?”

“Well, he might not have got around to being Merlin yet, when I ran into him. The files I swiped from UNIT are a bit vague about that. And we crossed paths under rather stressful circumstances, so we didn’t have much time for small talk. There had been an emergency, you see, and I was doing an autopsy on a pig.”

“A pig?”

Tosh hefted a pillow, and looked as minatory as it was in her to achieve. “Do you want to know why I painted that dragon in the Hub, or don’t you?”

Tommy turned out to be pretty good at supine contrition as well. “I do indeed.”

Tosh smiled. “There’s a story about Arthur and Merlin. Probably a different Merlin – one without a leather jacket. The story goes that it was a dragon in the caves below Camelot that told Merlin Arthur’s destiny, and what he would have to do to bring it about.”

“Wise lizard.”

“Maybe. But the other things the story says about it aren’t so nice.” Tosh’s expression darkened. “I painted the dragon as a warning. At Torchwood, we see what others don’t. All the hidden patterns of the world, and some things that have to be, whatever the cost. But it doesn’t make us better than the people above us. And it certainly doesn’t make us God.”

Tommy stroked Tosh’s back. “Still, that old dragon did one good thing, eh? Bringing Arthur and Merlin together.”

Tosh cocked her head on one side. “Arthur and Merlin. The hero who sleeps until the time foretold, when the hour of greatest peril is at hand. The trickster armed with secret knowledge, who hides in shadows to save the world .” She smiled. “I think that would be a ‘yes’.”

The caress of Tommy’s hands became more insistent. “Bet that Arthur and Merlin didn’t have as much fun as us, though. In the stories, I mean.”

Tosh raised an eyebrow as Tommy guided her back down onto the bed. “Did I not get around to telling you about the Internet?”

  
2\. Never such fields of paradise as the fields we left behind.

  
Benjamin Linus knows more than he wants, but less than he would like. It is a good thing that he is of a disposition to appreciate life’s little ironies.

Ben does not (for example) know why the DHARMA station of whose mildewed floor-tiles he is presently enjoying a more than adequate view is called “The Dragon”. The Powers That Had Been at DHARMA had allowed their taste for symbolism free rein when it came to naming their less significant outposts. To Ben, who prides himself on possessing that streak of intense pragmatism common to all true visionaries, their imagery has always seemed as mouldy as The Dragon’s walls.

Ben also does not know exactly why John Locke is currently fucking him, inexpertly but with a rude vigour that does John credit, on the floor of the aforementioned DHARMA station. He strongly suspects the agency of Jacob. Ben _does_ know, with the limpid clarity of apprehension which has disconcerted acquaintances since his earliest youth, that John has been told to do this, that John is enjoying it, and that the extent to which John is enjoying it is causing John some distress.

(Ben, a little to his surprise, is enjoying it too. But personal gratification has always weighed much less heavily in Ben’s calculations than his enemies have alleged.)

The bulb above them gutters incessantly, stealing the walls and ceiling and bringing them back again. How flimsy at last are the citadels of men, built over that which whispers to willing ears from the shackled dark.

Benjamin Linus, who knows far too much about Destiny, stretches out his arms, and runs his fingers along The Dragon’s scaly tiles.

  
3\. Beauty on beauty called us back, when we could rise and ride.

  
Tara stood open-mouthed in the doorway. The air of the room before her was bright with falling worlds.

“The Tears of the Dragon.” Willow was cross-legged on the floor amidst the glowing spheres that rained from the air around her. She looked up at Tara with a disconcertingly golden gaze. “Cool, huh?”

Tara found her voice. “It’s beautiful. What is it? What do the scenes inside the orbs mean?”

Willow watched the globe nearest to her. In its depths, a handsome young blonde man was wrapped around a gawky big-eared lad with dark hair. The sphere blinked out as it touched the floor. “No one knows for sure. It’s very old magic. When I asked Giles…”

Tara blanched. “You told Giles that you’re doing spells like this?”

“Sweetie, I know that Watchers make you nervous, but it’s not like they’re the Inquisition. Giles isn’t going to have my head chopped off for practising the magicks.” Inside another sphere, a big Caucasian man and a small Asian woman nestled together in companionable slumber, until the orb vanished on contact with the ground. “Anyway, he told me the best guess is that the spell gathers glimpses of destined meetings. Of unions that had to be. It’s named for the dragon that prophesied the coming together of Arthur Pendragon and Merlin. Or so they say.”

Tara averted her eyes hastily from the glimpse of flesh heaving beneath a flickering electric light. “Why don’t the spheres last, though? Why does the Dragon weep?”

“Because everything ends. Because tears, like Camelots, are there to fall. It’s in their nature. And that won’t stop for any magic.”

“Not for the fastest Wicca in the West?”

“Not for the greatest warlock there ever was.”

Willow’s eyes had spent their gold, and looked a little bereft without it. As she rose and pulled Tara into a kiss, the final sphere fell behind them, and the last scene blinked out unregarded.

FINIS


End file.
